


A House Has Many Stories

by Angel Ascending (angel_in_ink)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Conversations in the Rain, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Panic Attack, So Canon Divergent By Now, There Will Always Be A Place For Molly At The Table, This Is All Conversations And Feelings, Written After Episode 61 And Before Episode 62
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-11
Updated: 2019-05-11
Packaged: 2020-03-01 06:19:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18794686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/angel_in_ink/pseuds/Angel%20Ascending
Summary: The first few hours in the Mighty Nein's new home, as Caleb explores and many conversations are had.





	A House Has Many Stories

**Author's Note:**

> There was so much I wanted to write after I watched episode 61. I didn't realize it was... quite this much and would take so long. I even put off watching the new episode until I finished this fic, it was that important to me that I finish it. I took a few liberties with the canon layout of the house, converting one of the second floor rooms (the one with the long table in) into a bedroom for Fjord. Also I added a washroom because that's important.

_Don’t get too attached_ , Caleb thinks as he secures Jannik in his new pen, petting the moorbounder until the creature gives a rumbly, rusty purr. _The house is temporary. It can be taken from you. Everything can be taken from you._

Still, Caleb can’t help but smile as Nott carries her husband over the threshold of the doorway, as Jester twirls in the entryway, as Beau declares she’s going to go find a space to set up a training room. Everyone separates to go exploring and Caleb is no exception, though his explorations are for a serious and practical purpose. He sets Frumpkin down so the cat can get familiar with his new home before saying the words of a spell that are nearly second nature to him now. He blinks until the magic stops fizzing behind his eyes and looks around at the entryway, looking for any trace of magic that is not his own or his friends. He doesn’t see anything yet, but that doesn’t reassure him. There has to be some sort of scrying magic somewhere in this mansion, surely. The Dynasty wants to keep tabs on them, anchor them here. That’s what the house is. An anchor. But anchors have their uses, and Caleb can use this to his advantage, once he knows it’s safe.

Caleb ignores the stairs for now and goes through past the entryway and the room beyond into what turns out to be the dining room, which could easily seat twice their number. The furnishings are worn but tasteful, practical, and Caleb wonders a bit about whoever lived there before them. Had they been practical people, or had anything fanciful of worth been stripped of this place before it had been given over? It didn’t matter to Caleb, but it was something to think about. He enters the kitchen, surprised that Caduceus was not already in it. He could only imagine the firbolg’s quiet delight at having an actual kitchen to work out of, instead of cooking over a campfire night after night. Caleb is about to leave when he spots the trapdoor set into one corner of the room.

 _A wine cellar? Or something else?._ Caleb isn’t sure, and he finds himself hesitating with one hand against the wood. His own home, long ago, had had a root cellar of course. Trent’s cottage had contained a room underground as well, where— where—

“Caleb?” Caduceus’s voice breaks Caleb from where his thoughts were leading, and Caleb is terribly grateful for it. “Everything all right?”

Caleb stands and turns, taking a deep breath to calm himself as he does so. Caduceus just looks back at him, damp from the rain, his old staff held loosely in one hand.

“Just… exploring,” Caleb finally says. “There’s a trapdoor here.”

“Oh I hope it’s a root cellar,” Caduceus says cheerfully. “Every home should have a good root cellar.” He says a word, and the crystal on the end of his staff lights up. “Let’s see what we have here.”

The smell hits them immediately when they open the trapdoor, vinegar and yeast and mold. Caleb immediately sneezes, but Caduceus just takes a deep breath and smiles. It does not take them long to descend the wooden steps, where Caduceus’s light shines off of vegetables left to rot and barrels of what must have been wine and beer, long since spoiled and gone to vinegar, in the case of the wine.

“Someone forgot about this place,” Caduceus murmurs. “A little bit of cleaning up and cleaning out will have it useful again though.”

“Do you want some help?” Caleb finds himself asking, but Caduceus just smiles and shakes his head.

“I’ll be fine, thank you. You keep… exploring.” Caduceus says the last word in such a way that Caleb knows that Caduceus knows what he’s really doing.

******

Caduceus watches Caleb go, noting the crease between the human’s brows that went as deep as a canyon when he was worried about something, which was nearly always. In some ways a little worry could be useful, could make you more aware of potential threats, but it could wear a body down as well, like a stream, no matter how gentle, could wear away a rock, given time enough. Caleb is not worn down, not yet, and Caduceus means to do the best he can to make sure Caleb and the rest of their friends don’t wear themselves down and wear themselves out. The easiest way he’s found to do this is with a good meal, which is why he’ll leave any explorations of their new home until after dinner.

He looks around the root cellar, assessing the state of things. He is not entirely sure if the yeasty smell means the beer in the barrels is bad or good, Beau might have to help him with that. The same goes for the wine, though if it has truly gone to vinegar that can be of some use to him. The onions have yellowish-green sprouts that look limp from lack of sun and while a few of the potatoes are salvageable, the rest are too rotten to be good for very much. Still, they have their uses.

Caduceus’s new staff is up in the kitchen, leaning against one of the ovens. His old staff is in his hands, the wood worn and familiar. The beetles swarm when he taps the staff on the ground, and he smiles as he watches them descend on the rotten produce.

“You have served me very well,” he says to the many times great grandchildren of the beetles that had first made their homes in the staff seasons upon seasons ago, when he had been younger, when life had been simpler. “I thank you for what you have done for me. If we are here in the spring I will let you outdoors to make your way in the world. Until then, I hope this will suffice.”

A beetle lands on the end of Caduceus’s nose, feathery antennae waving at him in what Caduceus thinks might be a friendly way before flying off to join the others. Caduceus leans his old staff against the wall, removing the crystal from the end, smiling as he climbs out of the root cellar with an armful of what potatoes he had deemed salvageable, the crystal balanced on top.

The root cellar may have been forgotten, but the rest of the kitchen has not been, Caduceus notes with pleasure. The pantry is well stocked with all the staples he could ask for, and there are dried spices in jars in a little rack on one of the walls. He tastes several of these with delight before he looks over the cookware and the ovens, all clean and ready to be used. There is even a sink with running water, which is the height of luxury as far as Caduceus is concerned.

Caduceus reaches into his bag and pulls out a stone crock that has survived the ocean and the jungle with him, has survived underground and above it. He opens the lid, closes his eyes, and breathes in the smell of the sourdough starter that has made this journey with him. For a moment, just a moment, he lets himself miss the old kitchen, his old home, the way the moss had grown on the door and over the stones after everyone else had left, everyone except him. For a moment he thinks about his family and about how he will see them again some day. Then he opens his eyes and goes about making the first loaf of bread for his friends in their new home.

******

As Caleb moves past the dining room he can faintly hear what sounds like someone running up and down the stairs, and he chuckles when he hears Jester’s voice faintly echoing off the stone.

“Momma, they gave us a house, like a really big house and you have to see it, it’s amazing! I can draw it for you or something but I don’t know how I’m going to get the letter to you since we’re pretty far away but maybe if Caleb learns how to do his teleport thing I can come visit you soon and just show you and—“

Jester’s words trail off as Caleb walks further through the mansion, way past the cut off limit for messaging magic as he understands it, but that’s Jester, full of energy and heedless of limits. Now that he can no longer hear her, he can hear something else coming from the next room, the sound of wood moving along stone.

Caleb isn’t sure what the room used to be, but he’s pretty sure he knows what it’s going to become, watching Beau moving the wooden benches that had been in the middle of the room towards the walls. She had barely been in the door before she had started talking about clearing out a space to train in.

Slipping past her, he finds himself in a common room, filled with chairs and couches and most importantly _books._ There is no magical glow from the books or the room itself, but Caleb loses himself for a few moments in studying the titles of what books are on the shelves. Histories, mostly, from what he can tell. He promises himself that he’ll return later and opens the door to the next room. He sees more bookcases, a desk, two chairs facing the desk. A study, from the looks of things. He walks over to the desk and the great chair behind it, sitting down. There is no parchment or ink on the desk or in the drawers, but he could fix that easily. He could—

_Master Ikithon sits behind his desk, his quill scratching along the parchment. He does not look at Bren, not directly, but Bren knows that Master Ikithon is watching him regardless. He’s always watching him._

_“The results of your latest training exercise were… less than satisfactory,” Master Ikithon finally says, not looking up from his work. “I do believe some…. adjustments are in order.”_

_The skin along Bren’s arms itches and he has to fight not to scratch at it, fight to keep his expression calm as he remembers the table and the scalpels and the pain and—_

Caleb comes back to himself gasping, clutching his forearms, the spell he had cast on himself faded with time or broken as his concentration, he isn’t sure. He stands quickly, casting it again, and when he sees that there is no magic in this room either, he leaves, almost running into Beau as he does so.

“Caleb?” She places her hands on his shoulders to steady him, then gives him a closer look. “You all right? You’re all pale. Paler.”

“I—“ Caleb takes a deep breath and shakes his head.

Beau jerks her chin to indicate the study. “It gives you the creeps too?”

“The… creeps.” Caleb’s hands grip his forearms, and he fights not to scratch. “Yes. I suppose it does.”

“My dad had a study like that. It was where he used to deliver all of his favorite lectures about how I was bringing shame on everyone and I would never find a proper husband.” Her mouth twists. “Think we could convince the others to turn it into a bedroom or something?”

“We could bring it up at dinner,” Caleb says. “Are we short on bedrooms?”

Beau shrugs. “No idea. This is as far as I’ve gotten.” She looks around, then raises an eyebrow. “What about you? Have you walked the whole place yet? Seen anything, you know, _interesting?_ ” She makes a vague hand gesture and raises an eyebrow pointedly on the last word in a way that Caleb assumes means, _did you find anything magical? Is anyone listening?_

“Not yet,” Caleb replies. “But I haven’t gone to the second floor. Or the tower.”

Beau chuckles and squeezes his shoulder before turning him loose. “Jester’s probably already claimed the tower. It’d be like something out of a fairy tale or one of her romance novels.”

Caleb smiles, the expression not feeling entirely false. “She is welcome to it, if she likes. I do not care where I sleep.” He really doesn’t. He knows better to get attached to any one place. That’s what he tells himself anyway.

******

Beau has a lot on her mind, each thought vying for her attention in a way that a drink would ease, or a good fight or a… no. For the first time in a while she has no desire to find a sexual conquest to lose herself in for a few hours, just to make her head be a little less loud. She could examine that thought, explore it further, but she’s in no mood for self-contemplation at the moment either. Instead she looks around the room, the benches shoved back to the edges of the space. She remembers the training rooms at the monastery, the hard mats that were slightly more forgiving than the stone floor alone would have been. She’ll have to ask Dairon what they’re made out of, find someone in the city who could—

Dairon. The name and the associated thoughts shove their way forward. She’s going to have to get in touch with Dairon again, sooner rather than later. So much has happened that she needs to know about. Though, knowing Dairon, they already know about it and have formed their own conclusions, shaped by their biases. She probably thinks Beau has turned her back on the Empire. She hasn’t, not yet anyway, though she’s starting to think she _could_ turn her back on the Empire if she had to. She could turn her back on the Dynasty as well, if it came to that. She’s been wondering if she could simply serve Truth, the way other people serve their gods.

Thunder grumbles in the distance and that makes her think of Yasha. Yasha and that look on her face when she had talked about running, about leaving her wife to die, guilt and sorrow and shame in her voice and in her eyes.

Beau doesn’t remember what age she was when she had decided she was never getting married, but she still remembers the way her father had looked when she had said it. He had never raised a hand to her in his life (and oh sometimes she had wished he had tried, if only to give her the excuse to hit him back) but he had looked like he had wanted to in that moment. When she thought of marriage all she could see was the distant look in her mother’s eyes, the way her father had never smiled at either of them. The only time she had ever seen her parents touch each other had been at social engagements where her father had her mother on his arm, constantly at his side. Her fake smile had reminded her of the grimace of pain of a fox caught in a trap.

But Yasha had been _married,_ had found someone she had loved enough and who had loved her enough to risk dying for, someone who _had_ died for her. It was like something out of one of Jester’s smut novels, except it wasn’t romantic at all. It was real. What would it be like? To be loved like that? What would it be like to _lose_ that?

Beau realizes she’s pacing, running her hands through her hair as she thinks. “To the hells with this,” she mutters. She needs to burn off this extra energy somehow. Run up and down the stairs a few hundred times. Find Jester and pick out a room and talk about how to decorate it. Assuming Jester doesn’t want a room of her own all of a sudden…

Beau groans and goes looking for the closest set of stairs.

******

Caleb spots his first glimmer of magic on the second floor when he finds the washroom, an enchantment to heat water for the several sunken tubs that dominate the space. He lets himself think about a bathhouse in Zadash for a moment, just a moment, before moving on.

“Nugget!” Jester’s voice echoes from somewhere in the distance. “Nugget! Where did you go? Nugget, home!”

Caleb keeps his eyes open for both any more signs of magic or the blink dog, but he sees neither as he steps through an open doorway and into a room that contains one bed, a small desk, and Fjord, who is sitting on the bed with his head in his hands.

“Fjord?”

Fjord’s head snaps up, and if Caleb had blinked in that moment he would have missed the anxiety stamped plain across Fjord’s features before his face smoothed out and his lips turned up at the corners.

“Caleb. Hey.” Fjord chuckles softly, but there is a tremor underneath the sound of good humor. “Snuck up on me there. You taking lessons from Nott?”

“Hardly,” Caleb says as he steps into the room. The only bits of magic he sees are on Fjord’s person, he has no reason not to move on to another room. And yet. “You seemed to be a million miles away just now.”

“I guess maybe I was,” Fjord says. “I just… this is the first time I’ve had my own room. Like, not just a room to myself, but my _own_ room.”

Caleb does not think this was the only thing on Fjord’s mind, but he nods in understanding.

“At the orphanage they would have stacked us all into a single room like logs for the fireplace if they could have,” Fjord went on. “And, well, you’ve seen what it’s like on a ship. Space is a luxury. And inns are nice, some of them, but they don’t count.” He gestures widely. “This is _ours_.” He thumps the bed. “This is _mine,”_ he says softly.

 _It can be taken away from us_ , Caleb thinks again, but he does not say it out loud. He will not take Fjord’s moment from him with truth. It would not be a kindness. Instead he nods at the bed. “It is indeed yours. I hope you sleep better here than you did at the inn the other night.” Caleb is almost entirely sure he knows what that had been about. The smell of the sea had been strong in the room when Fjord had left, and when Caleb had felt the blankets, they had been damp.

“Yeah,” Fjord says, dropping Caleb’s gaze for a moment. “Me too.”

The silence hangs in the air between them for a long moment as Caleb waits to see if Fjord will take the opening that has been handed to him or not.

Fjord sighs and runs a hand over his face. There are circles under his eyes, puffy and bruised looking. He yawns, and Caleb finds himself yawning in sympathy. “Think I might actually try to catch an hour or two of sleep before dinner.”

Caleb hadn’t actually expected Fjord to open up to him, but the effort had been made at least. It’s not like Caleb doesn’t have his own secrets to keep, though it seems as if he is shedding layers of his past more quickly these days. Still, he understands keeping things close to the chest. “I shall leave you to it then, my friend. Sleep well.”

There is a look of relief in Fjord’s eyes, there and gone in an instant. Caleb notes it as he leaves, closing the door behind him.

*******

Fjord breathes a sigh of relief as the soon as the door shuts behind Caleb and he goes back to putting his head in his hands. He wasn’t lying. He _is_ tired and he _does_ want to get some sleep before dinner. He’s just not going to, is all. Because if he falls asleep, if he dreams…

Fjord wonders if Uk’otoa could just straight up kill him in his dreams. He’s woken from them with water in his lungs and blood on his lips before, how much power would the serpent need to make sure he never woke up?

The fact that Uk’otoa might be able to kill him in his sleep is less frightening than the thought that he simply might be rendered powerless again, and the fact that his possible death frightens him _less_ frightens him in an entirely different way. There’s so much fear in him that’s there’s no room for air. He dimly hears himself gasping. He could be drowning again, for all the good that the air is doing him.

“Nugget!” Fjord hears Jester call from the hallway. “Nugget, where are you?”

Fjord tries to call out to her, but all he can do is gasp like a fish dragged from the depths and into the light.

A shape appears suddenly in front of him, brown fur streaked with black, all large ears and lolling tongue. Nugget looks at Fjord and his tail stops wagging and his ears go back. He whines and then barks, short and sharp.

“Nugget!” The doorknob turns, the door opens, and Jester is there, eyes bright and smile wide. “Is this where you’ve been— Fjord?”

Jester’s at his side so fast that for a moment he wonders of magic was involved. He clutches at her shoulders like the drowning man he feels like as she cups his face in her hands.

“Fjord? Fjord, what’s wrong?” Magic flows from her to him, as cold and sudden as a slap to the face. He doesn’t know if it’s the magic or the touch of her hands, but suddenly the air contains oxygen again. He rests his forehead on her shoulder until his breathing is mostly regular before he looks up at her again.

Jester looks scared, her normally dark complexion gone the color of a cloudless winter sky at noon. He hates that he frightened her while simultaneously being grateful and ashamed that she had to see him like that. “I’m sorry,” he says as he wipes away a few tears that he had cried in his panic.

Jester’s hands fall from his face to his shoulders, as if she needs to be touching him as much as he needs to be touched. Next to him, Nugget whines and puts his head in Fjord’s lap. Fjord finds himself stroking the dog’s course fur, if only to give himself something to do with his hands.

“Fjord.” Jester’s voice is soft, insistent. “Please tell me what’s wrong.”

There’s nothing else he can do. If it were anyone else in the Nein he would have tried to play it off, to deflect. But this is _Jester_ , who he’s never lied directly to, who knows him the best out of anyone. So he tells her about the dream, about the punishment, about waking up powerless and panicked, about his relief when his power returned. Through it all, Jester’s expression is contemplative, and when he finishes speaking only then does her expression darken.

“Traveller?” Jester asks, her voice raised as she looks over Fjord’s shoulder. “Is there a spell so that I can go into Fjord’s dreams and kick Uk’otoa’s scaly butt?”

Fjord doesn’t wait to see if Jester’s god responds to her. “Jester, don’t! I don’t know how this works, he might be able to hurt you if you do that!”

“Well if he can hurt me than I can hurt him!” Jester says with a scowl. “But maybe you’re right. I shouldn’t go… by myself.”

“Jester,” Fjord tries to sound stern. “Please.”

Jester huffs her breath out in a sigh. “Well we have to do _something._ He’s a bully, Fjord. He’s not just going to stop if you ignore him. We need to tell everyone else.”

Fjord feels the panic rise in his chest again like the tide. “Jester, I _can’t_. What am I supposed to tell them? That I might suddenly become useless because I refuse to break the third seal on Uk’otoa’s prison?”

“First of all even without powers you will _never_ be useless.” Jester pokes him hard in the chest. “Literally no one will think that. And second of all don’t you think it’s better that they _know_ your powers might stop working instead of being surprised by it? This way we can at least try to make a plan.”

“What kind of plan can we possibly make?” He doesn’t mean to sound so disparaging, but he honestly has no idea how to _fix_ this.

“I don’t know. That’s why we need to tell the others. More brains means more ideas.”

Fjord knows that if he says nothing to the group, Jester won’t spill his secret. But she’ll worry. She’ll worry and he’ll hate himself for that, and while he’s used to that feeling that doesn’t mean he wants to add any more layers to it. What Jester is saying makes sense. It _does._ Still….

“Jess, if I don’t have my powers, all I can do is swing a sword.” _I won’t be able to protect you_ , he thinks, and he doesn’t know if he means just her or everyone else as well.

“So?” Jester says it like it’s not the end of the world. “Yasha swings a sword too. Maybe she can teach you to like, do it better or something.”

“She also gets super angry and has some scary looking wings. I think she’s got a leg up on me there.”

“Okay, just a little, maybe, but it’d be something! And I bet we could find someone else to give you powers. I mean, Yasha’s god is all about strength and lightning and stuff, that’s pretty cool. Or maybe if you play a few pranks the Traveller would come visit you! You could be my acolyte or something!”

Fjord smiles. It’s a tiny smile, but no less real for all that. Against all odds, he feels better. “I’ll… tell everyone after dinner,” he promises her.

“Good!” Jester says cheerfully. “And if you don’t, I shall poke you with my tail until you confess!”

Jester pokes him in the ribs with her tail and he squirms away from her, laughing. Nugget barks, tail wagging furiously. For the moment, everything seems less terrible. For a moment, he can breathe again.

*******

Caleb’s mind is still on the conversation with Fjord as he walks down the hallway into the next room, so he’s startled when he realizes that it too is occupied, Nott and Yeza sitting at what looks to be a workbench, holding hands and looking tensely at him. There is a faint smell of chemicals in the air, and what looks to be a faded scorch mark on the floor. Beyond them Caleb can make out a bedroom through another open door, and nothing glows in his vision from either room except for what Nott has on her person.

Caleb has the feeling he’s interrupted something important, a conversation perhaps. There is a heaviness to the air, and to the weight of their eyes upon them. “Forgive me,” he mutters, and backs out of the room, his face flushed as he quickly strides away. He hears the murmur of their voices as he retreats down the hall, but he can’t make out the words, not that he wishes to. Their situation is not an easy one, and he does not wish to intrude.

*******

Nott watches Caleb leave, wishing she had the excuse of helping him to get her out of this conversation she’s been having, even though it’s a conversation that has to happen. Her hands twist in her lap. She wants a drink. She wants a drink very badly, but she’s seen the faint concerned expression on Yeza’s face when she drinks from her flask too often. So instead she fidgets and tries to identify the faint chemical smells in the room. Whoever had owned this mansion before them must have had more than a passing interest in alchemy. It almost smells like home.

“I understand that we can’t stay in the Empire,” Yeza is saying. “If what your friend Caleb said about the Assembly is true, if I suddenly show up back in the Empire after being captured by the Cricks— by the Kryn, they’ll want to know what happened, and I can’t tell them the truth. Not to mention… it doesn’t feel safe their anymore.” Yeza looks like it breaks his heart to say it.

Nott reaches out and places a hand over one of his. “You’ll be safe in Nicodranas,” she promises him. “Jester’s mother… knows a lot of people. I’m sure she can set you and Luke up in a nice place. And you don’t have to worry about money, I’ll leave you with plenty, and I can send more along. And I bet… I bet Luke will love the ocean.”

“Come with us.”

Nott winces. It’s not the first time he’s asked her to do that, it was what he has said just before Caleb had interrupted them.

“It’s not that I don’t want to,” Nott starts to say again.

“I don’t care that you’re a goblin,” Yeza says quickly. “You’re _alive._ We can explain it to Luke and he’ll understand, given time.”

“Luke is a bright boy,” Nott says. “But he’s so young. Do you know how many young children have screamed and cried at me, even when I was trying to help them?” She doesn’t wait for an answer. “I was so afraid of that you would do when you saw me.” She squeezes his hand. “But if Luke looked at me and screamed… it’d break my heart. I want to be able to hold him in my arms. In my _real_ arms, in the body I’m supposed to have. I’ve gotten used to this body, but I’m not _happy_ in it. And—“ The words stick in her throat and she wishes she could have a drink to lubricate the way for this hard truth. “Goblins don’t live as long as halflings do. Not nearly as long.”

There’s more she could say. About how every day she feels more of her old life slipping away. How she had almost forgotten Luke’s face. About how, sometimes, she swears she can feel her body aging and crumbling around her. Instead she leans closer to Yeza until their foreheads are touching.

“Caleb will fix me,” Nott tells Yeza. “He just needs a little more time, a little more studying. And then when I’m me again, I can come back to you. Both of you.”

She hopes that’s true. She’s afraid that, by then, she’ll no longer be able to fit back into her old life, that she’ll have changed too much to be happy as she once had been. But she’ll try. She has to try.

“All right,” Yeza says quietly. “All right.”

Later, curled up together for a nap before dinner, Nott will think that, even though her body is wrong, how she feels when Yeza touches her still feels right.

*******

A short, sudden bark jerks Caleb out of his thoughts and he finds himself standing in front of Nugget, who wags his tail when he sees Caleb and barks again. Caleb winces at the sound. It has been a long day already, and what he wants now is to be done with his task and hide himself away in peace and quiet for a few hours.

“ _Your mother is looking for you,_ ” Caleb says in Sylvan before remembering that technically the dog belongs to both Jester and Beau. _“The blue one, I mean.”_ Can blink dogs see color? _“The one with the horns.”_

Nugget cocks his head to the side for a moment and then vanishes. Whether he’s gone back to Jester or is off somewhere else, Caleb doesn’t know. He moves on, checking rooms and the hallway as he does, but nothing magical turns up. Does the house not have any scrying devices? Truly?

Caleb’s not surprised when he finds Yasha out on the balcony, standing in the rain, staring up at the sky. He hadn’t been looking for her, but it’s where he would have gone if he had been. He stands in the doorway between the bedroom he had just walked through and the balcony, his eyes doing a cursory sweep. No magic but the glow of Yasha’s sword.

He’s about to turn and go when Yasha turns her head to look at him. “Caleb?”

“Sorry,” Caleb says. “I did not mean to disturb you. I was just looking for—“ He makes a vague gesture, in case there is some listening magic nearby that he has not yet detected.

“It’s all right,” she reassures him. “I was… a bit in my own head. Watching the storm.”

Caleb nods, expecting Yasha to turn away from him, to give him an out so he can leave. Instead she turns fully, leaning back against the balcony railing. “Do you have a moment?”

His spell will fade again if he stays to talk to her, but at the moment that seems like a poor reason to deny her a conversation. “I do.”

“There’s been something I’ve been wanting to ask you for awhile now, but so much has… happened.”

Caleb thinks about the morning the world changed, and about the morning it changed again. He thinks about a grave by the side of the road and the depths of the ocean. He thinks about a sword in his chest and rage in her eyes. “That is an understatement,” he says, and chuckles a little to signal that this is humor, however slight.

Yasha simply nods, though the corners of her mouth twitch upwards for a second. “You may be right.” She sighs and fiddles with one of her braids. Caleb would summon Frumpkin for her to give her something to do with her hands, but a wet cat would not be the most enjoyable to pet. “Do you remember the night we fought the goblins and the ogre? Back when— Molly was still with us?”

Caleb remembers nearly everything, but recalling the information is not instantaneous, coming to him piecemeal. After the fight he had fallen asleep in the rain. He doesn’t remember why. Molly had been sensible and had slept under the cart, he remembered that. He remembers seeing Yasha’s wings for the first time. He remembers asking her if she was an angel. Her answer had been vague, and she had promised to speak to him about it later. Was it later now?

Maybe Yasha takes his silence as confusion. “ _You spoke to me in a language I’d never heard anyone else speak before,”_ she says in Celestial, and her words sound like rain hitting wind chimes.

 _“I remember,”_ Caleb replies, wincing. When he speaks the words sound sharp and crystalline, making his skin prickle and his arms itch from memories. He tries softening his tone. _“I asked you if you were an angel.”_ This time the words are more liquid, but it’s less like water and more like molten rock. _“You said you might be, of a sort.”_ He thinks he knows what she is better than she does, perhaps, but he wants to see what she will say.

 _“I don’t actually know what I am,”_ she replies. _“I was born with eyes of two different colors and I knew a language that no one else in my tribe knew and I had wings made of bare bone. The Sky Spear told me that I had been touched by something before I was born, but she did not have a name for what I was.”_ She looks at him. _“Do you?”_

Caleb nods slowly, suddenly reluctant to speak. What if he’s wrong? What if what he says upsets her in some way? Still, he speaks.

“ _Everyone knows about tieflings,”_ Caleb says. _“About people born with a bit of Infernal influence in their blood. Well, some scholars believed that if people could be born and influenced in such a way, surely there had to be people walking the earth similarly influenced by divine nature as well. There was even a book written by someone who had claimed to have met such individuals, who called themselves aasimar. They spoke Celestial, the language we are speaking now. They are rarer than tieflings, supposedly. Some had skin like marble, or strange colored eyes and hair, or were wreathed in halos of light. Some had wings that shone like the sun, or had to hide their faces because any that looked upon them would be burned to ash. And there was a third kind, who was said to carry darkness with them like a shroud, who struck fear into every heart, and had wings made of shadows and bone.”_

 _“Like me,”_ Yasha says softly.

 _“Like you,”_ Caleb replies. He does not tell her that it was thought that the aasimar like her were considered evil, twisted by darkness. Yasha was many things but evil was not one of them.

 _“Aasimar,”_ Yasha says, as if testing out the word, the shape of it in her mouth, the texture of it on her tongue. _“That sounds like me.”_ She smiles at Caleb then, one of her small, not quite sad smiles. _“Thank you.”_

 _“You are welcome,”_ Caleb says, and when Yasha turns away to contemplate his words or perhaps the rain, he leaves, closing the door gently behind him.

******

Yasha stares out into the rain, listening to the thunder gently rolling in the distance, wondering if it will shape itself into words.

 _“Aasimar,”_ she says out loud. She is suddenly struck by the memory of being bound as Lorenzo had looked her over.

“ _Two divine bloods and a half-beast.”_

Yasha had wondered at the time how he had known about the connection to her god. Now she realizes that he had been speaking about something else entirely. He had known what she was when she herself had not, and that makes the memory worse, as if it had needed help.

The sound of the door opening shouldn’t make Yasha spin around with fear and anger in her heart, shouldn’t cause her eyes to darken and her wings to unfold themselves. After all, she had been calm when Caleb had opened the door. But she hadn’t been thinking about Lorenzo then, hadn’t been thinking about how helpless she had felt. She sees the figure in the doorway take a step back, their eyes going wide.

“Fuck, I’m sorry!” Beau says quickly, her hands up in a placating gesture. “I didn’t mean—“

For a moment Yasha swears she sees a few white feathers clinging to the skeletal frame of her wings, but then both wings and possible feathers are gone, taking the place of anger.

“No, no, _I’m_ sorry,” Yasha says. “I didn’t mean to do that. You just… startled me.”

Beau hovers in the doorway. “I should have knocked, I guess, I just didn’t think anyone was out here.” She sighs, running a hand through her hair. “I had a lot of stuff on my mind and there wasn’t anything around for me to hit, so I started running up and down the stairs, and then I got kind of warm so I wanted to get some fresh air and cool off. Then I remembered we have a balcony now.” She steps up to the balcony railing, close but not too close to Yasha, and looks out towards the horizon.

Yasha looks up at the sky so she can avoid looking at Beau. She spends a lot of time trying no to look at Beau these days. Her tribe mated for life, and that is that. Zuala died and Yasha didn’t and she does not have room in her heart for anyone else.

 _You are still shackled, child,_ the memory of the Stormlord whispers.

“Do you want to talk about what’s bothering you?” Yasha asks, and she’s not surprised or offended when Beau laughs.

“I really don’t,” she says, tilting her face up towards the rain. “I should probably go back inside. I haven’t even picked out a room yet. Have you?”

Yasha gestures to one of the doors behind her. It leads to a small bedroom, the furnishings simple. She doesn’t need much. “Do you think anyone would mind if I chose that one? I like that it has a door to here.”

“I don’t think anyone is going to argue with you for it,” Beau says. “There’s plenty of space here.” She chuckles darkly. “It’s even bigger than my old home.”

“Is it?” Beau doesn’t talk about her parents or her home very often. Hardly ever really.

“Yeah. Almost wish my old man were here to see it. Almost.” Her hands on the balcony clench for an instant before relaxing. “So what do you think of the new place?”

The subject change isn’t terribly abrupt or unexpected, but it still takes Yasha a moment to think of an answer. “It’s big. Well built. Sturdy.”

Beau chuckles again. “There’s that,” she says. “It’ll be nice to have a place to come back to that’s ours.”

Yasha nods. She hasn’t had a place that felt like home since the night Zuala was killed, and she hasn’t had a _person_ who felt like home since the day she had woken up after her captivity and learned that Molly was in the ground. It’s going to take time for her to think of this place as home, if she ever does. These people… that is a different story.

“Hey, Yasha?” Beau’s voice is quiet, and Yasha feels her shoulders tense. “I uhhhh… if my flirting ever made you feel uncomfortable or anything, I’m sorry. I didn’t know about—“

“It’s fine,” Yasha says quickly before Beau can go on. “I didn’t mind it. It doesn’t bother me.” It’s the truth. She had learned from watching Molly that flirting was fun, not a serious thing. It was the quiet conversations that could get you in trouble, Yasha felt.

“Cool,” Beau says. “Okay. Good.” She stretches, stepping away from the balcony railing. “I’m going to go inside.”

“I’m going to stay out here for a bit longer,” Yasha says. She watches as Beau starts to walk away, only to pause in the doorway.

“You know,” Beau says, turning around. “If we run into your old tribe, and they still want your death, they’re going to have to go through the rest of us first. Starting with me.” The smile she gives Yasha is feral and bright as a lightning flash, and all Yasha can do is blink in the face of it long after Beau has left.

******

Caleb should like towers, by all rights. He’s a wizard, and wizards usually live in towers. It’s traditional. Instead, as he marches up the many (many) stairs, all he can think about is the creeping dread he had felt when Yussah had lead him to the room where the teleportation sigil had lain. That feeling would probably fade in time. Probably. Still, he is glad when he reaches the top of the tower with not a glimmer of magic to be found. He stands by the window and tries to imagine having a room up here. He’d have to use magic just to get the bed up the stairs. There could be a telescope over by the window. Still….

“It doesn’t feel right,” Caleb says to Frumpkin, who is winding around his ankles, purring forcefully.

“What doesn’t feel right?”

Caleb lets out an undignified yelp and spins around to see Jester standing in front of him, grinning.

“I’m sorry!” Jester looks like she’s trying not to laugh. “I wasn’t trying to sneak up on you!”

“I was off in my own little world I suppose.”

“Is it nice there?”

 _Not very often,_ Caleb thinks. “Sometimes,” he says out loud. “I was just trying to imagine having my bedroom up here, but it wasn’t working very well. Maybe I will just take one of the rooms on the second floor.”

“We could make this a guest room!” Jester says brightly. “Except it’s a little far away from everything. Except the library.”

Caleb goes very still. “There is a library? Here?”

“You haven’t seen it? The door is like, right next to the tower stairs.”

It had taken Caleb what had felt like an age to ascend the tower steps. Descending them is faster, and almost becomes faster still and nearly fatal when Caleb almost trips. He hits the bottom of the stairs still at a run, and only barely manages not to crash into the wall as he turns the corner and finds the door he had somehow missed.

The smell of parchment and ink and leather hits him immediately as he looks around wildly, this time hoping for even the faintest hint of magic coming from the shelves (so many shelves) lined with books, or from the drawers of the desk. Nothing catches his eye but he has no time to be disappointed, not when he’s reading the titles of the volumes on the shelves. Magical theory, history, maths, natural studies, almanacs and indexes. His fingers fly across the lettering on the spines and he realizes he’s laughing only when he hears Jester giggling from behind him.

“This is perfect!” Caleb nearly shouts, spinning around to gesture at the room. There is parchment and ink on the desk, and he can tell at a glance that they are of the finest quality. There are chairs and couches along the walls, and the stone floors are bare.

“I can draw a teleportation circle here!” Caleb takes Jester by the arm and tugs her toward the space he has in mind.

“I can visit Momma!” Jester cries, hugging Caleb so tightly that the breath goes out of him in a squeak. “You finally figured out the spell?”

“I did!” Caleb manages to gasp when Jester stops hugging him. “I was going to surprise you with it. I just need some expensive chalk, and inks.”

“You alway need ink!” Jester teases. “Oh Caleb, this is wonderful!”

“It is!” Caleb says, and pulls out his spell book from his holster and a worn piece of chalk from one of his coat pockets. “I should practice drawing the circle now so that I don’t waste any expensive supplies when the time comes.”

He doesn’t hear Jester leave the room, doesn’t even realize how much time has passed until he hears Nott calling for him and the smells of something delicious reluctantly tears him away from the wonderful room filled with books.

******

Jester walks up the stairs to the top of the tower with a smile on her face. She had wanted to ask Caleb if he knew a spell that would help with Fjord’s dreams, would protect Fjord from Uk’otoa hurting him, but she had known that once Caleb had opened his spell book and had started drawing things that it had been too late for that conversation. Besides, he been _happy._ He had been smiling and laughing and she hadn’t wanted to interrupt that rare happiness with her questions. After dinner she’ll ask, after Fjord tells everyone what is going on with him. She’ll use her truth spell if she has to, because this is _important,_ but she hopes she doesn’t have to. She knows Fjord has a lot of other secrets that he doesn’t want to share, and that’s fine! She just wants him to tell everyone about what his patron or god or whatever it is is doing to him. That’s all. She wants to fix this, but it’s bigger than her. Maybe it’s bigger than all of them. But they won’t know until they try _something._

Jester reaches the top of the tower and looks around. She hadn’t really had time before Caleb had darted off and she had followed him. She’s not sure why he couldn’t imagine having a bedroom up here, her imagination is better than his though, obviously. She’d paint flowers on the walls and put down some colorful rugs and and maybe they could find a plant that didn’t need sun and her bed would go over _there_ and Beau’s bed could—

Jester feels the smile fade slowly from her face. What if Beau doesn’t want to be roommates with her anymore? There’s enough space for everyone now, probably. Jester might end up in the tower room all alone.

“Well, not like, _alone_ alone,” Jester says, continuing the thought out loud. “I mean, I’d have Nugget and Sprinkle and of course you’d be there too, Traveller. Right?”

 _Of course_ , comes the whisper in her ear.

“And I mean, I wouldn’t have to _stay_ in my room,” Jester continues. “I could leave whenever I wanted, all my friends would be downstairs and it would be _fine.”_

All the things she’s saying are true, technically. But she’d miss Beau, and that’s the truth too. She should just go find Beau and ask her if they’re still roomies and she will _not_ cry if the answer is no. She _won’t._

She’s running down the stairs as Beau is running up them, and it’s a miracle that they both don’t fall down the stairs when they crash into each other. (Literally a miracle, Jester feels a hand grab the back of her armor to keep her upright.) There is a long moment after the shock of the collision wears off where they simply stare at each other.

“Do you still want to be my roommate?” They both ask at once.

Their joined laughter echoes through the tower.

******

“It’s not extravagant,” Caduceus is saying as he ladles soup into bowls and sets them on the table. “I would have needed more time and more vegetables for that.” He tilts his head. “I wonder where they get their vegetables from. I didn’t see any farms around here, did you? And there’s no sunlight in the city.”

“Maybe they have special vegetables that don’t need sun,” Nott says as she sits down, Yeza sitting next to her. The tension Caleb had felt between the two earlier seems to have lessened, and he is very glad of that.

“Vegetables that don’t need sunlight. Hmmm.” Caduceus looks thoughtful. “I’d like to see something like that.”

“Those weird fruits in that temple we went to that made Caleb and Nott high didn’t need sun,” Jester reminds him.

Fjord clears his throat. “Speaking of our… seafaring adventures, there’s something I need to talk to everyone about. After dinner I mean.”

Caleb sees the small, approving nod Jester gives Fjord. Ah. Of course she would be the one to coax Fjord into talking about his troubles.

“After dinner,” Caduceus agrees, slicing a warm loaf of bread with a sharp knife before paying the plate around.

Beau plops down next to Caleb and grabs a piece of bread as it goes by, immediately taking a bite. “Worked up an appetite going up and down all those stairs,” she says around a mouthful of bread. “You sure you don’t want the tower room, Caleb?”

“I am sure,” Caleb says. “I believe I shall set up a space for myself in the library.”

Beau groans and reaches for her coin pouch as Jester laughs.

“I told you! Didn’t I tell you?”

“Yeah, yeah,” Beau grumbles, but she’s smiling as she pushes a few gold coins over to Jester. “I underestimated how big of a nerd you are, Caleb.”

“Be nice or I won’t let you read any of my books.” He’s kidding of course, and it’s totally worth the punch on the arm he receives.

“ _Your_ books? It’s _our_ library!”

“No fighting at the table,” Caduceus says wearily, then pauses with the ladle halfway to the next bowl. “It’s so weird _saying_ that instead of hearing someone else say it.”

Yasha drifts in as the bowls of soup are being passed down the table, her hair still damp from the rain, her wet clothes changed out for dry ones. She looks like she’s thinking about something, but she smiles when Frumpkin jumps up onto her lap and begins to purr.

“Hey, Caduceus?” Nott says. “I know numbers aren’t one of your strong suits, but you’ve put out too many place settings.” She gestures toward the end of the table, where an empty bowl and place sit next to an empty mug.

“My mother used to do that,” Caleb surprises himself by saying. “You save a place for the unexpected guest, and for absent friends.”

“That’s right,” Caduceus says with a smile.

There’s silence at the table for a long moment, everyone looking at the empty space. Caleb has a good idea who most of them imagine sitting there. Caleb raises his mug.

“To friends. To family, both found and lost. To our new home.”

 _All of this can be taken from you_ , insists the quiet voice in the back of Caleb’s thoughts, but for the moment it is drowned out by the sound of his friends knocking their mugs together in a toast. To friends. To family, both found and lost. To a new home.

**Author's Note:**

> As soon as Ashley said on Talks that Yasha doesn't know *what* she is, I knew I had to write something between her and Caleb. 
> 
> Matt tweeted about there being magical underground gardens with sunless vegetables growing in them and I need Caduceus to visit them as soon as possible because yes.
> 
> There *is* a guest room in this version of the house, and I have plans to write about it at some point. A *much* shorter piece than this.
> 
> I'm off to go watch the latest episode, my buddy texted me like 5 lines of just screaming when he got to the end of it, and my braintwin did similar, so I know something big goes down. I am vibrating with excitement! Or Mountain Dew. This fic has been brought to you by caffeine. 
> 
> I'm angel-ascending on Tumblr and angel_in_ink on Twitter if y'all want to stop by and say hi!


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